December 6, 2023 • 33 mins
This episode of the Tudor Dixon Podcast focuses on the challenges faced by veterans and service members when they come home from war. Tudor is joined by Jonny Walker, a retired US Army member and board member at Special Operations Wounded Warrior (SOWW), who shares his personal experiences and insights. The conversation highlights the difficulty of transitioning from a military mindset to civilian life, the struggle to express emotions and seek help, and the impact on families. It emphasizes the importance of non-governmental organizations like SOWW in providing support and advocacy for veterans. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday, Wednesday, & Friday. For more information visit TudorDixonPodcast.com
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Here at the podcast,
we are all grateful every single day to our veterans
and our service members, and today we want to talk
about an organization that works with our veterans and wounded
warriors who are having trouble coming back home and leaving
the war behind. I had the pleasure of meeting my
guest today this past weekend, and I know you're going
(00:22):
to love his passion for healing our veterans. I think
oftentimes we wonder how we can show how thankful we are.
I know a lot of times we will stop folks
and say, hey, we're really grateful for your sacrifice, We're
really grateful for your service. But this organization we're going
to talk to today, they're doing such great work toward
healing and helping these folks. So I think this is
(00:44):
an opportunity for us to kind of spread the word
that there is something that can be done. We oftentimes
complain about government not doing enough for our veterans, and
what I heard this past weekend is just such an
amazing organization that I think can do something better than
government's ever done. So I'm excited about talking about this.
We're going to get into all of that, but really quickly. First,
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(02:13):
order shipped free with promo code tutor. All right, now,
I want to welcome in Johnny Walker to the podcast.
He is retired from the US Army and now serves
as a board member at Special Operations Wounded Warrior, also
known as SAO, and the Senior Advisor and Director for
Special Mission Solutions at Republic Mission Systems. Thank you so
(02:35):
much for being on.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Thank you so much, ma'am. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I heard what you guys were talking about this weekend
and we had a chance to talk a little bit too.
It really struck me because I had just spoken to
someone a few weeks ago, and I told you this
story about a gentleman who came home and he's been
really struggling, and this was kind of what you described
to me. That you come home and you've been sent
off on a mission. In your mission is war and
(03:00):
it's really hard to turn that off. And I think
for those of us who have never served, I've never
heard it put the way that you talked about it,
and I was wondering if you could just talk a
little bit about that to our audience who has a
heart for service and has a heart for helping our
service members, but don't really understand that experience.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, like I said, you know, when you initially joined
the military, whether it's any branch of service, you're really
not trained to really deal with any of that. So
the military really just takes you from a person from
the street and they give you the tools to be
able to make decisions and so on and so forth
in your military career. So when you leave. So like
my experience, you know, I was not a troubled youth.
(03:43):
I didn't get in trouble or I didn't have any
problems or anything. I just I needed a different direction.
So when I joined the military, I really didn't, you know,
get up and make my bed in the morning and
do the things that you know you would do now.
But in the military, they teach you that. So they
teach you all these things and they structure your life
of how you're able to put things in perspective of
how you make sure that you do everything you need
(04:03):
to do. And it's kind of a like driving a car.
It is muscle memory. So after years of doing all that,
and they train you, like I said we mentioned yesterday.
You see all the movies or drill starts or whatever
talking about kill, kill, kill, blood makes the grass grow. Well,
you prepare soldiers for doing that, whether it's a meleow female,
you teach them to do that, and then there's really
(04:24):
no way to re engage back in society when you
go off to war. So those issues you can't fix,
you have to find someone that can fix those. But
where do you go to get that direction and that purpose?
You don't know? Those questions sows the term yesterday, you know,
being scared. Most guys in my career field, they don't
(04:46):
want to use the word scared, but they are. So
you have to face facts and say that I'm scared
to figure out how I can re enter society after
doing everything I did for going to war and doing
those things. Young men and women they get trained to
do this, but they don't. You don't have to de
escalate that training to be able to fit back intocideing
(05:08):
because war is a very horrible place to be.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
And we talked to you were really specific about we
go out there and the human mind is not meant
to kill another human, and yet we know we have
to do it to survive, and you relive that all
the time, like that's in your head. So how do
you how do you come away from that? And I
and oftentimes, like I think about the story in World
(05:35):
War Two where the guys all decided on Chris play
a football game or a soccer game on the essentially
the battlefield together, and then the next day to go
back out and have to kill those same men that
you just played a game against. I think people think, well,
war is war, but you are looking at the other
(05:56):
person and you know that's a human So what is that?
What is that like to try to let that go?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Oh, well, you never do. You know, it's like having
a for instance, you know, if you're in a car
accident or whatever and you're severely is injured from that
car accident, you never forget that accident. I mean that
stays with you forever. That I guess that's where they
come up with, you know, the post traumatic issues that
you face. But you know, you put you know, you
kind of maximize that and make it twice as bad.
(06:25):
So you look at most of the people that join
the military or anywhere from nineteen to twenty five years old.
So what nineteen and twenty five year old makes good decisions?
Anyway that we always have kids, They make decisions based
on what they want, not what they need. But now
you put a gun in someone's hand and he goes
and does that those type of actions, and then that's
(06:47):
another thing that gets added to his plate. So what
twenty one year old kid who goes out and just
you know, does his job and maybe kills five or
six people in one mission, and he comes back and
how do you how does he do? How does he
deal with that? And those answers are probably he doesn't.
So that's why you see, you know, the suicide rate
of twenty two veterans per day, and you see guys
(07:08):
that have you know, drinking and alcohol problems, drug problems,
so on and so forth, because they try to hide
the feelings and emotions. And so that's what SAL does
is they see those they recognize those things by clinicians
or word of mouth. Like Matt and I were talking yesterday.
You know, a buddy of mine that I've known him
for twenty five years, you know, had no idea was
(07:29):
struggling until I get a phone call that he's going
to kill himself. So I have to be able to
figure out how to help that guy and figure out
what his problems are because they're probably generally aligned with mine,
and then go, hey, it's okay to feel that way.
It's okay to be scared, it's okay to cry, it's
okay to have emotions. It's not okay to mask them
(07:51):
and then take it to the next step and you know,
get drunk all the time or end up killing yourself
because all you're doing now is you're adding other problems
to other people's plates. And that doesn't fix the problem
either're just masks. It makes it worse.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
But you made this point that when you come home,
you've you've really been programmed by the military to go
out and kill the enemy, right that that's your your
mission is to be very organized and get the mission accomplished.
But when you come home, it's hard to deprogram those
thoughts and come back to that place where you feel emotions.
(08:26):
And so even though you may have this feeling of like,
I'm very sad, this is very h I'm very hurt,
I don't know how to explain that I'm sad, and
I'm scared you don't necessarily know how to explain it
because that really hasn't been shut off. Those emotions haven't
been turned back on. So how do how do you
do that? That part of the work at SOW.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
And I want to put it in this like I
watched I listen to a NASCAR driver talk about why
it's why he doesn't drive on the highway. You know,
so you just go on a NASCAR and you're doing
two hundred miles on a race track. You can't just
leave the racetrack, get in your car and go home
because you're going to go back to those speeds to
do that. It's just very it's very mind numbing for
you to try to even do that. So that's why
(09:10):
you see every once in a while you see like
Kyle Busch got arrested in Charlotte one time for doing
like one hundred and fifty on a highway. He's programmed
to do that, but it's just it's muscle memory. Like
I said, it's very difficult to shut it off. And
what happens is is that you come back and like
I said yesterday, if you're married or have a girlfriend
or a boyfriend, or you have children or whatever. You've
(09:32):
removed yourself from those guys and your family to go
hang with your guys that go out and do missions.
You're with those people twenty four to seven, three hundred
and sixty five days a year, and then you remove
that element and you come back to your house and
now you feel like a stranger. And so I found myself, Okay,
when are we going back over? You know, I'm feeling
(09:53):
kind of like I'm bored. You know, even though I
had friends and I could go do things, and I
had hobbies and I would look you mess around with
my old car or whatever, but you really felt like
you were missing portions of your life because you're not
back over deploying again with your guys. And that was
the missing link for a lot of folks. And so
(10:15):
those are also, like I said, the resiliency things, the faith,
the family, the friends, the finances, and your and your
ability to have a friend's network that works. A friend
is going to tell you, hey, John, I watched yesterday.
You know, we partied on the boat and you passed out. Man,
we don't need to do that anymore. Those are the
friends you need versus the guys that are really your
(10:36):
acquaintances that just keep feeding the animal and feeding the fire.
And so what we do at sal is we try
to do that and it's very quiet with how we
do it. So you know, the guys will come out,
like our signature venders are taking bacon and you guys
will come out. They're very reluctant to be there because
we don't feel like we earned anything. We don't feel
like we need to be given something. Most of the
(10:59):
people that you met yesterday when we were talking, they
don't want to take anything from anybody. They want to
get back to someone. So when they're sitting around these
fire pits and they're having these discussions and one of
the buddies will bring up, hey, you know I thought
about this as well, and I said, oh my gosh,
I didn't know that I thought about that too. It's
like the friend that you shared, That's why I want
(11:20):
to talk to him. It is because for him to
say the only reason I haven't committed suicide is because
of my children. Well, I got to get a touch
to that guy. I got to talk to him. I
got to find out where he is in his mindset,
and I got to fix that I got to erase
those thoughts. You don't erase them, you just put them somewhere.
Like I said yesterday, you never fix it. You just
(11:41):
have to go through it and get through that hard
pain and that hard bright versus the easy wrong, which
we always you know, we relate to. But you got
to get to that guy and say, hey, listen, it
does matter. Your kids need you. They're going to be
parents one day, they're going to graduate from college, they're gonna,
you know, go go proms, and you need to be
present for that. So you can say what a great
dress or what a great TuS and those are the
(12:04):
things that that kind needs to get help with.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. And we think about this from
a civilian perspective, and when you go through a tragedy,
that tragedy is still within the life that you've lived
every day, and so there are still memories and there
are still familiarities with everything that you see before and
(12:29):
after tragedy. But you are out in the battlefield and
suddenly you're thrust back into a home that you are
not really you're coming back. You weren't a part of
for so long, and it doesn't feel familiar, and you're
used to a team that always has your back and
is around you, and now you're alone almost And so
I think this is something that a lot of us
(12:51):
don't think about if we haven't been off to war
and come back. But I find it interesting because I
think that that slow down, that instant slowing down, is
so is it's like we can't really we can't really
understand that because our world is always pretty similar. What
(13:13):
happens when a service member, a man or a woman
is out there gets wounded, is expecting to continue in
the battlefield, as you know, the mission's not over, but
they get sent home. How hard is that for those folks?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Oh? It is because you feel like you just you've
let your friends down, you've let your teammates down because
either you got shot or whatever. And then you add
in the piece that I mentioned to you yesterday, So
you get blown up in an accident and your soldiers
pass away. I mean, that's a horrible thing that you
have to deal with every day, because again, it's like
a traffic accident. You know, you're in a car. You're like,
(13:49):
you ask yourself, whine, why did he go and I didn't.
I don't understand why is that? Why am I still here?
And why is he not? So there's all these guilts
that come with you, because that's just the human nature
of just life. You know, you always want to make
sure you take care of the guys to your right
and left, period, whether you like them personally or not.
(14:09):
They're out on a mission with you. And I used
to tell my guys, you know, hey, when I'm doing
my convoy brief or whatever. Once I put my helmet
on and I get in the vehicle, I want everything
to leave your mind. I don't care about your girlfriend,
your wife, your family, or whatever. I need you to
be focused on the mission because if you don't, then
you put your mind someplace else. Then you make mistakes,
or mistakes can happen, which can result in people getting
(14:32):
injured or killed. And those are the things you try
to prevent when you do go out on missions. But
you don't want that nineteen to twenty year old kid
to make a mistake because he's mad at his girlfriend
because you argued on the phone, and he forgets what
his job's supposed to really be. And then that's when
other things happen. So there's just all these stressors that
a lot of people just don't even see or hear.
(14:54):
And that's what I mentioned yesterday to you about being scared.
You don't want to say that. I don't know. Hey, first,
I don't know what you just said. They don't want
to say that because they figured that you're going to
be embarrassed or you're going to get yelled at or whatever.
And it's I wanted all my guys to understand when
we left the wire, I want to bring you back.
That's my only job. My job is not to be
(15:16):
their friend outside the wire. It's not to you know,
do the politically correctness and try to win the hearts
and minds. My job is taking care of the soldiers
that were assigned to me to make sure that I
get them back home. And if I didn't do that,
then I failed my own mission. And that's another stressure.
So that's where you see a lot of the problems
with most all veterans from Vietnam to all the wars
(15:39):
we have, they feel guilty. I mean, if you watch
Bandit Brothers, the last series, where most of these veterans
are talking and they brought up what you just said
about the football game, which is crazy, but shifty powers
made have come in. I got a chance to meet
him when we're in Iraq. He said, we would probably
been really good friends. That guy might have liked to fish,
he might have liked to hunt, he might have liked
(16:01):
to do some of the similar things I had to do.
But I had a job to do, and I did
my job, and he had a Comcast as well, And
so how just so elementary to break it down to that,
just that piece of those phrases. But then, you know,
whoever came up with the war as hell comment really
nailed it, because men and women soldiers, they go through
(16:23):
all kinds of traumas. So going back to your point,
when you do come back home, your wife or your
spouse or your children, they're affected by not only you
being there, missing birthdays, missing Christmases and so on and
so forth. But how do they relate to you after
knowing what they've heard or seen from the friends and
family readiness groups and so on and so forth about yeah,
(16:45):
we heard that, you know, four guys got wounded and
two guys got killed. You know, how do I talk
to my dad about, hey, you know, your best friend
got killed. How do I bring that up in the answers?
They don't, so they suffer as well because they don't
know how to respond to the spouse or the soldier
that's coming back. How do you have a conversation with
your mom or dad about the traumas that she went through.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
I don't remember. As a kid. You know, our parents,
my generation, our parents went to Vietnam, and my girlfriend
would talk her dad was a Vietnam vet. Never talked
about it, never, she never heard anything. And you know,
we were middle schoolers, and I remember her telling me,
I don't know what happened to my dad, but he
(17:29):
wakes up with these terrible nightmares and my mom has
to calm him down. And he doesn't know that she's
his wife. He thinks she's someone bad. And as a kid,
I didn't I had no idea what that meant, you know.
I was like, why would that happen? Because you're a child,
you don't know, And so you think about those families
that had I think the dynamic, you know, I imagine he
(17:54):
was proud but also probably had a lot of guilt too.
Didn't want to tell them what happened over there. Didn't
want to burden them with that, you know, and that
generation was came back to people that were horrible to them, right.
And so I think about growing up with a wall
between you and your dad or you and a parent.
(18:15):
There's that wall there that you can't break through. And
it sounds like what you're doing is breaking that wall down.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
We are and like I said, what we've tried to do.
We have so many people that really want to help,
but they just need to figure out how they help.
You know, you hear all the time, thank you for
your service, Hey, thank you for this or whatever, And
I truly appreciate that. And like I said yesterday when
several folks when we were in the speech is talking,
you know, you look at the media and the political
(18:43):
thing that we mentioned yesterday, I don't really follow any
of that. I believe that the basic base American citizen
loves the military. They love what we have, They love
the freedoms that we have, and those are not going
to go away. You know, what happened with January sixth
and on all this other stuff is just an unfortunate thing.
(19:04):
And you know, all the bryants and all the stuff
that goes with it, but that's just noise. The real
people like yourself that are getting the message out telling
people that hey, you do have hope, you do have
a reason to be here. Oh, by the way, it's Christmas,
it's Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for doing what you do.
And it does matter, you know, Yes.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I think it matters because I think that when we
don't know what the organizations are out there that are helping,
we assume that the government should help. And I think
that and that's something that I talked about over the
weekend too, is that I think that especially conservatives, have
never been so adamant that the government someone needs to
(19:44):
go in and fix this, you know, need I need
a government official to make this right. And I don't
even know that people hear themselves saying it. It's like
we've got to get a better speaker the one that's
going to fix this. You know, We've got to have
somebody in government fix this. We've never said we want
government to come and fix this before and organization who
could be better then guys, When men and women who've
(20:06):
gone through this to help other people come out of
this and understand really what's going on. And you know,
I've heard stories of people going to the VA and
they're like, I went to the VA and this guy
has never served. He didn't know how to talk to
me about what I'm going through. It was a joke.
And we've always said the private sector does things better.
I mean, I will talk to people out there who
will say, man, the private sector does school better, the
(20:27):
private sector does business better. Like the social security is
a mess because it's our a government. Why are we
asking government to fix this when we can fix this.
And we've also always been of the mindset of we
take care of our own, whether it's the church, whether
it's community. But this is an opportunity to invest in
our veterans who so desperately need someone to come around
(20:50):
them and say we are so grateful. And for all
of you out there that want to at Christmas time
say hey, this is the time where I want to
say I am so grateful to you. These are the
ways to do it. Look into these organizations that can
help folks really bring them back from a place and
save families. I mean, it's not just I think that's
(21:12):
the important thing to remember. This is not just the
man or woman who served. This is all of the
people around one person affects hundreds.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Oh absolutely, and I mean it was yesterday. Is why
I usually when I talk to folks, I asked the audience,
you know, how many people are either being in the
military or family were reserved, and so sixty percent of
the audience raise your hands. So but again it goes
back to my son left. You see gold star parents
all the time. Well, that one person that passes away
or commits suicide, it affects the entire family structure. It's
(21:45):
not just hey, my wife. You know I left my wife,
I left my children. You're affecting friends, family and everything.
So that's why we talked about the resiliency to five fs.
You know, fitness, how are you doing with your health?
You know I do that too. I take that every day.
You have to make sure that your finances are good.
So if you upset one of those fs, whether it's faith, family, friends,
(22:07):
or fitness or financial freedom, you have problems. Those are
the stressors that come up on board. And so where
sal really does a good job with really good organizations
like Task Force Dagger, you know, Warrior's Heart. You know,
most of some of these guys that do the Marine
Corps thing, all these organizations are intertwined. So my job
is to make sure we all talk right. So we
(22:30):
just did this Operate Reset week at Indian Rocks Beach
and we had a marine and he's from California, and
he was just like totally, you know, no, I can't
get anything done. No one's going to help me do anything.
So I go to the VA here at day Pines.
One of my former rangers, Dustin, is a care coalition
for the VA. Well, he runs that whole thing for Tampa,
(22:51):
but he's also connected to all fifty states. So I
gave that guy his card and he already connected him
with the right person at California to get him help.
So waving through the system of bureau I don't even
I don't even call it biocracy or or bureaucrat stuff.
It's it's a game. It's a system, and if you
(23:12):
don't know the right person in that system, you can't
get ahead in life at all. So filling out paper
X and oh you forgot to fill out paper y. Okay,
Well let's make it use your friendly for everyone. And
that's what we try to do.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So I'm an advocate. I mean, that's what we need
in so many areas. I mean, most people don't do
their own taxes. You have somebody to help you. It's
like you have to have an advocate in a lot
of different areas. Why wouldn't you need an advocate here?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
That's it. And subject matter experts within their career fields,
whether it be mental health, whether it be you know,
physical help, whether it be alcohol, drug counseling, or whatever.
I don't know enough about it, but I know who
I can call to get that help for that other person,
so they can tell those triggers. Like I said yesterday,
when you wake up in the morning and you look
in the mirror and you don't identify that you have
(23:58):
a problem, you're the problem. You have to identify that
you have issues. It's like doing your short term and
your long term goals. If you put that on a
wall and you don't follow it, you're just wasting time.
So what we try to do is we try to
reprogram thost soldiers that come back to say it's okay
to cry, it's okay to have emotion, it's okay to
(24:21):
ask for help. If you ask for help, what help
do you really need or are you just putting a
band aid on a sucking chest wound is what when
the military was saying, So you have to fix the problem.
And then once you fix the problem, how do I
continually keep that glide path going? So my mental help
and my fitness is in shape from not only myself
(24:41):
but my family. So if you identify me and you say, hey, John,
I've known you for five years and I just want
to say I'm starting to see a pattern of stuff
that has to be resonated with that person. And they
got to go, oh wow, yeah, I've known do r
She's told me that I need to do this. Well,
you probably have to put some weight behind that, because
it's not just someone telling you something. They're trying to
help you keep your help and well being back. And
(25:04):
so what Sala does is we do fishing events. We
do like I said yesterday, we just started a female
only operator Reset Week, which is.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
What it happens at the Operator Reset Week.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
What really funny is these guys are so nervous they
don't want to talk to anybody. The same thing with
the ladies that come, and then by day two they're
opening up, they're meeting people and they're like, Okay, I
didn't know that that guy had a problem. Oh I
knew that guy, I knew her. Yeah. So so every
part of a team, like I mentioned yesterday, keen construct
(25:37):
is like I never did anything by myself, always had
help on everything. In the military, you do nothing by yourself.
They say that you do your pet test, you know,
you run or whatever. No, you got somebody helping you.
Somebody's going to clock your time, nobody's going to count
your push up, somebody's gonna hold your feet for your situps.
But you're gonna have some sort of assistance with everything
you do in the military. So that's why I made
(25:58):
the comment yesterday. Nothing is done individually in the military
unless you're an individual and that's your intent and you
want your fifteen minutes of fame. No, we have men
and women that don't ask for fifteen minutes of fame.
They just go do what they're asked to do, and
they complete their mission, and then they shake hands and
they go back and do their normal life.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. You know, the point here is
that if you see someone that's constantly trying to be
out there on TV, and like we did, I did this.
I did this. This is a group effort and the
idea is to bring people together. No one's trying to
get famous off of this. This is about continuing service
(26:40):
and service looks all different at different times of life. Right,
Service may be serving overseas. Service may be bringing folks
back and taking care of them. And you have a
canine program too, right.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yes, ma'am. So Babon Canine is run by Josh Perry
and those guys identify folks. We actually gave one to
Lawrence Jones. Got a chance to meet Lawrence last year
at the at the at the hog hunt, and just
to watch Lawrence himself change when he had his dog
and how he was reacting to the folks. So again
you see personalities like yourself and you come out. They
(27:13):
just want to fit in. They want to be part
of that normal conversation. And so I had really good
conversations with Lawrence about just in general, about what we do.
And so Lawrence took it upon himself to pull some
of the hunters away. We had metal Man or Leroy
Petrie out there and pull some of our guys to
do a fireside chat and then they televised their own
fox about what the meaning of and Leroy made a
(27:36):
great point. He's like, I didn't want to come, you know,
I was very reluctant to come, but once I got here,
I didn't feel like I was worthy. And then after
I went out the first day, I'm really glad I
did come. It's a shame in that thought process. And
so that's where we get I get myself worth is.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
That paid for? Though? For them to go out there?
Like how do they how do they do it? Because
I could see how some people say this is overwhelming?
How do I even do this?
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, we have sponsors. We get people that donate to
our sal organization and special operations Wounded Warrior dot org
and they just donate to funds. We have specific groups
like somebody will donate money to operate a Reset week,
or maybe they'll donate money to our taking bacon or
just they just donate money generally to do that. So
when we had the opportunity to go to mar A Lago,
(28:25):
really crazy, you know, reach out to some folks. Some
guys at Glock Taylor, a good buddy of mine, made
some specialized pistols that had our logo on one side,
and task Force diggers on the other and all these
people are donating money. Military metal arts which have seen
probably seen on LinkedIn. They make these amazing signs out
of liquid metal and they're colored and do this. So
(28:47):
they made one for the sal logo, they made one
for Leroy Peache for the Medal of Honor, and we
optioned all those off and all that money comes back
to us. So you know, with most organizations like myself,
we don't pay anybody volunteer basis. Everybody on our board
is all volunteer. We have legal we have a lady
that does all our admin it's just all volunteered time.
(29:08):
And so those are the things that you people take
for granted for as well. They forget that, oh wow,
John's not making any money off of this. You know. Dottie,
our administrative lady, she doesn't make any money off She
just does it because she knows she needs to help folks.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
So really, I want people to think about this. The
goal here is we hear all the time that there
are twenty two veteran suicide today, and the goal here
is to make twenty two zero. That's right, and that
is what all of these people. I think that is
just so amazing all these people volunteering, putting their time
in to do this, and really that takes help. And
(29:44):
so when you're looking at your end of year giving, honestly,
look at this organization. So tell people where they can
go and look at this, because honest I believe that
the people who listen to my podcast are very like
minded and this is the type of this is the
type of opportunity we want to take and we want
to run with because just like we've talked about making
(30:08):
I mentioned over the weekend, I've been talking a lot
about you know, making that abortion number lower. Doesn't have
to be a lot, doesn't have to be government doing it.
That's something that we can do as people. Same thing here,
get together, look at the organizations that are really making progress,
and you guys are I mean, that's the beauty of this.
You can look and you can see results. You can
(30:30):
see that this is actually helping people, and how can
how can you not feel great about that? I mean, honestly,
I think that's the thing. When people are looking to
put their money someplace and say, okay, I want to
make an impact here, they want to see that there's results.
And you already have results. So tell us where exactly
they can go.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
So they can go to the Special Operations Wounded Warrior Organization,
our headquarters out of Tabor Shitting, North Carolina, which is
really adjacent to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. That's what we
do a lot of our things. But they can go
to that website and that web page and you'll see
it donate there and they can read up on the history.
We've been around for fourteen years. It was really started
by a fireside, you know, some civilians and talking to
(31:12):
some military guys and they're like, hey, we need to
really get back. And that's how it started. And then
it's just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger as the
years go on. And so just like any other organization,
you know, you want to get back more than you
ever took from something. You know, as a business owner,
I mentioned yesterday your mission statement to be a successful
business owner. If you don't follow that, you're not going
(31:33):
to be successful. So our business model is too. If
I can save one person, like we talked about yesterday,
your friend, if I can call him on the phone
and talk to him and say, hey, it does matter.
If your life matters, you matter to your family. If
I can fix that one person, then now his job
is to go pay it forward, find somebody else that
he can talk to and say, hey, I just talked
(31:55):
to this guy that I don't even know, never met
him before. He called me on the phone out of
blue and he told me that I can make a
difference by not doing certain things to end my life.
And so those are the impactful things that you do,
and your whole audience can do that they know if
somebody's struggling. I mean, I'll give you my cell phone number.
You can call me any time. You won't because I
have a passion for that. Why because I almost did
(32:17):
it and if I had not have had friends like
Sara major Rick Merrick that I'll introduce you to that
called me and let me know. It's okay John to struggle,
and it's okay to be scared. It's not okay to
mask it and hide and then try to figure out
yourself because you can't. You have to have help in
everything that you do in your life. You have to
(32:37):
have some sort of an assistance process.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I love that. It's so hard to be vulnerable, but
it's so important that people are and they let people
in and you've done great work. Johnny Walker, thank you
so much for being on today.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yes, ma'am, I appreciate it. You guys have a merry
Christmas and safe travel.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Thank you you too, and thank you all for joining
us on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. For this episod and others,
go to Tutordison podcast dot com. You can subscribe right there,
or head over to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts and join us next time
on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Have a blessed ding
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Here at the podcast,
we are all grateful every single day to our veterans
and our service members, and today we want to talk
about an organization that works with our veterans and wounded
warriors who are having trouble coming back home and leaving
the war behind. I had the pleasure of meeting my
guest today this past weekend, and I know you're going
(00:22):
to love his passion for healing our veterans. I think
oftentimes we wonder how we can show how thankful we are.
I know a lot of times we will stop folks
and say, hey, we're really grateful for your sacrifice, We're
really grateful for your service. But this organization we're going
to talk to today, they're doing such great work toward
healing and helping these folks. So I think this is
(00:44):
an opportunity for us to kind of spread the word
that there is something that can be done. We oftentimes
complain about government not doing enough for our veterans, and
what I heard this past weekend is just such an
amazing organization that I think can do something better than
government's ever done. So I'm excited about talking about this.
We're going to get into all of that, but really quickly. First,
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(02:13):
order shipped free with promo code tutor. All right, now,
I want to welcome in Johnny Walker to the podcast.
He is retired from the US Army and now serves
as a board member at Special Operations Wounded Warrior, also
known as SAO, and the Senior Advisor and Director for
Special Mission Solutions at Republic Mission Systems. Thank you so
(02:35):
much for being on.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Thank you so much, ma'am. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I heard what you guys were talking about this weekend
and we had a chance to talk a little bit too.
It really struck me because I had just spoken to
someone a few weeks ago, and I told you this
story about a gentleman who came home and he's been
really struggling, and this was kind of what you described
to me. That you come home and you've been sent
off on a mission. In your mission is war and
(03:00):
it's really hard to turn that off. And I think
for those of us who have never served, I've never
heard it put the way that you talked about it,
and I was wondering if you could just talk a
little bit about that to our audience who has a
heart for service and has a heart for helping our
service members, but don't really understand that experience.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, like I said, you know, when you initially joined
the military, whether it's any branch of service, you're really
not trained to really deal with any of that. So
the military really just takes you from a person from
the street and they give you the tools to be
able to make decisions and so on and so forth
in your military career. So when you leave. So like
my experience, you know, I was not a troubled youth.
(03:43):
I didn't get in trouble or I didn't have any
problems or anything. I just I needed a different direction.
So when I joined the military, I really didn't, you know,
get up and make my bed in the morning and
do the things that you know you would do now.
But in the military, they teach you that. So they
teach you all these things and they structure your life
of how you're able to put things in perspective of
how you make sure that you do everything you need
(04:03):
to do. And it's kind of a like driving a car.
It is muscle memory. So after years of doing all that,
and they train you, like I said we mentioned yesterday.
You see all the movies or drill starts or whatever
talking about kill, kill, kill, blood makes the grass grow. Well,
you prepare soldiers for doing that, whether it's a meleow female,
you teach them to do that, and then there's really
(04:24):
no way to re engage back in society when you
go off to war. So those issues you can't fix,
you have to find someone that can fix those. But
where do you go to get that direction and that purpose?
You don't know? Those questions sows the term yesterday, you know,
being scared. Most guys in my career field, they don't
(04:46):
want to use the word scared, but they are. So
you have to face facts and say that I'm scared
to figure out how I can re enter society after
doing everything I did for going to war and doing
those things. Young men and women they get trained to
do this, but they don't. You don't have to de
escalate that training to be able to fit back intocideing
(05:08):
because war is a very horrible place to be.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
And we talked to you were really specific about we
go out there and the human mind is not meant
to kill another human, and yet we know we have
to do it to survive, and you relive that all
the time, like that's in your head. So how do
you how do you come away from that? And I
and oftentimes, like I think about the story in World
(05:35):
War Two where the guys all decided on Chris play
a football game or a soccer game on the essentially
the battlefield together, and then the next day to go
back out and have to kill those same men that
you just played a game against. I think people think, well,
war is war, but you are looking at the other
(05:56):
person and you know that's a human So what is that?
What is that like to try to let that go?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Oh, well, you never do. You know, it's like having
a for instance, you know, if you're in a car
accident or whatever and you're severely is injured from that
car accident, you never forget that accident. I mean that
stays with you forever. That I guess that's where they
come up with, you know, the post traumatic issues that
you face. But you know, you put you know, you
kind of maximize that and make it twice as bad.
(06:25):
So you look at most of the people that join
the military or anywhere from nineteen to twenty five years old.
So what nineteen and twenty five year old makes good decisions?
Anyway that we always have kids, They make decisions based
on what they want, not what they need. But now
you put a gun in someone's hand and he goes
and does that those type of actions, and then that's
(06:47):
another thing that gets added to his plate. So what
twenty one year old kid who goes out and just
you know, does his job and maybe kills five or
six people in one mission, and he comes back and
how do you how does he do? How does he
deal with that? And those answers are probably he doesn't.
So that's why you see, you know, the suicide rate
of twenty two veterans per day, and you see guys
(07:08):
that have you know, drinking and alcohol problems, drug problems,
so on and so forth, because they try to hide
the feelings and emotions. And so that's what SAL does
is they see those they recognize those things by clinicians
or word of mouth. Like Matt and I were talking yesterday.
You know, a buddy of mine that I've known him
for twenty five years, you know, had no idea was
(07:29):
struggling until I get a phone call that he's going
to kill himself. So I have to be able to
figure out how to help that guy and figure out
what his problems are because they're probably generally aligned with mine,
and then go, hey, it's okay to feel that way.
It's okay to be scared, it's okay to cry, it's
okay to have emotions. It's not okay to mask them
(07:51):
and then take it to the next step and you know,
get drunk all the time or end up killing yourself
because all you're doing now is you're adding other problems
to other people's plates. And that doesn't fix the problem
either're just masks. It makes it worse.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
But you made this point that when you come home,
you've you've really been programmed by the military to go
out and kill the enemy, right that that's your your
mission is to be very organized and get the mission accomplished.
But when you come home, it's hard to deprogram those
thoughts and come back to that place where you feel emotions.
(08:26):
And so even though you may have this feeling of like,
I'm very sad, this is very h I'm very hurt,
I don't know how to explain that I'm sad, and
I'm scared you don't necessarily know how to explain it
because that really hasn't been shut off. Those emotions haven't
been turned back on. So how do how do you
do that? That part of the work at SOW.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
And I want to put it in this like I
watched I listen to a NASCAR driver talk about why
it's why he doesn't drive on the highway. You know,
so you just go on a NASCAR and you're doing
two hundred miles on a race track. You can't just
leave the racetrack, get in your car and go home
because you're going to go back to those speeds to
do that. It's just very it's very mind numbing for
you to try to even do that. So that's why
(09:10):
you see every once in a while you see like
Kyle Busch got arrested in Charlotte one time for doing
like one hundred and fifty on a highway. He's programmed
to do that, but it's just it's muscle memory. Like
I said, it's very difficult to shut it off. And
what happens is is that you come back and like
I said yesterday, if you're married or have a girlfriend
or a boyfriend, or you have children or whatever. You've
(09:32):
removed yourself from those guys and your family to go
hang with your guys that go out and do missions.
You're with those people twenty four to seven, three hundred
and sixty five days a year, and then you remove
that element and you come back to your house and
now you feel like a stranger. And so I found myself, Okay,
when are we going back over? You know, I'm feeling
(09:53):
kind of like I'm bored. You know, even though I
had friends and I could go do things, and I
had hobbies and I would look you mess around with
my old car or whatever, but you really felt like
you were missing portions of your life because you're not
back over deploying again with your guys. And that was
the missing link for a lot of folks. And so
(10:15):
those are also, like I said, the resiliency things, the faith,
the family, the friends, the finances, and your and your
ability to have a friend's network that works. A friend
is going to tell you, hey, John, I watched yesterday.
You know, we partied on the boat and you passed out. Man,
we don't need to do that anymore. Those are the
friends you need versus the guys that are really your
(10:36):
acquaintances that just keep feeding the animal and feeding the fire.
And so what we do at sal is we try
to do that and it's very quiet with how we
do it. So you know, the guys will come out,
like our signature venders are taking bacon and you guys
will come out. They're very reluctant to be there because
we don't feel like we earned anything. We don't feel
like we need to be given something. Most of the
(10:59):
people that you met yesterday when we were talking, they
don't want to take anything from anybody. They want to
get back to someone. So when they're sitting around these
fire pits and they're having these discussions and one of
the buddies will bring up, hey, you know I thought
about this as well, and I said, oh my gosh,
I didn't know that I thought about that too. It's
like the friend that you shared, That's why I want
(11:20):
to talk to him. It is because for him to
say the only reason I haven't committed suicide is because
of my children. Well, I got to get a touch
to that guy. I got to talk to him. I
got to find out where he is in his mindset,
and I got to fix that I got to erase
those thoughts. You don't erase them, you just put them somewhere.
Like I said yesterday, you never fix it. You just
(11:41):
have to go through it and get through that hard
pain and that hard bright versus the easy wrong, which
we always you know, we relate to. But you got
to get to that guy and say, hey, listen, it
does matter. Your kids need you. They're going to be
parents one day, they're going to graduate from college, they're gonna,
you know, go go proms, and you need to be
present for that. So you can say what a great
dress or what a great TuS and those are the
(12:04):
things that that kind needs to get help with.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. And we think about this from
a civilian perspective, and when you go through a tragedy,
that tragedy is still within the life that you've lived
every day, and so there are still memories and there
are still familiarities with everything that you see before and
(12:29):
after tragedy. But you are out in the battlefield and
suddenly you're thrust back into a home that you are
not really you're coming back. You weren't a part of
for so long, and it doesn't feel familiar, and you're
used to a team that always has your back and
is around you, and now you're alone almost And so
I think this is something that a lot of us
(12:51):
don't think about if we haven't been off to war
and come back. But I find it interesting because I
think that that slow down, that instant slowing down, is
so is it's like we can't really we can't really
understand that because our world is always pretty similar. What
(13:13):
happens when a service member, a man or a woman
is out there gets wounded, is expecting to continue in
the battlefield, as you know, the mission's not over, but
they get sent home. How hard is that for those folks?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Oh? It is because you feel like you just you've
let your friends down, you've let your teammates down because
either you got shot or whatever. And then you add
in the piece that I mentioned to you yesterday, So
you get blown up in an accident and your soldiers
pass away. I mean, that's a horrible thing that you
have to deal with every day, because again, it's like
a traffic accident. You know, you're in a car. You're like,
(13:49):
you ask yourself, whine, why did he go and I didn't.
I don't understand why is that? Why am I still here?
And why is he not? So there's all these guilts
that come with you, because that's just the human nature
of just life. You know, you always want to make
sure you take care of the guys to your right
and left, period, whether you like them personally or not.
(14:09):
They're out on a mission with you. And I used
to tell my guys, you know, hey, when I'm doing
my convoy brief or whatever. Once I put my helmet
on and I get in the vehicle, I want everything
to leave your mind. I don't care about your girlfriend,
your wife, your family, or whatever. I need you to
be focused on the mission because if you don't, then
you put your mind someplace else. Then you make mistakes,
or mistakes can happen, which can result in people getting
(14:32):
injured or killed. And those are the things you try
to prevent when you do go out on missions. But
you don't want that nineteen to twenty year old kid
to make a mistake because he's mad at his girlfriend
because you argued on the phone, and he forgets what
his job's supposed to really be. And then that's when
other things happen. So there's just all these stressors that
a lot of people just don't even see or hear.
(14:54):
And that's what I mentioned yesterday to you about being scared.
You don't want to say that. I don't know. Hey, first,
I don't know what you just said. They don't want
to say that because they figured that you're going to
be embarrassed or you're going to get yelled at or whatever.
And it's I wanted all my guys to understand when
we left the wire, I want to bring you back.
That's my only job. My job is not to be
(15:16):
their friend outside the wire. It's not to you know,
do the politically correctness and try to win the hearts
and minds. My job is taking care of the soldiers
that were assigned to me to make sure that I
get them back home. And if I didn't do that,
then I failed my own mission. And that's another stressure.
So that's where you see a lot of the problems
with most all veterans from Vietnam to all the wars
(15:39):
we have, they feel guilty. I mean, if you watch
Bandit Brothers, the last series, where most of these veterans
are talking and they brought up what you just said
about the football game, which is crazy, but shifty powers
made have come in. I got a chance to meet
him when we're in Iraq. He said, we would probably
been really good friends. That guy might have liked to fish,
he might have liked to hunt, he might have liked
(16:01):
to do some of the similar things I had to do.
But I had a job to do, and I did
my job, and he had a Comcast as well, And
so how just so elementary to break it down to that,
just that piece of those phrases. But then, you know,
whoever came up with the war as hell comment really
nailed it, because men and women soldiers, they go through
(16:23):
all kinds of traumas. So going back to your point,
when you do come back home, your wife or your
spouse or your children, they're affected by not only you
being there, missing birthdays, missing Christmases and so on and
so forth. But how do they relate to you after
knowing what they've heard or seen from the friends and
family readiness groups and so on and so forth about yeah,
(16:45):
we heard that, you know, four guys got wounded and
two guys got killed. You know, how do I talk
to my dad about, hey, you know, your best friend
got killed. How do I bring that up in the answers?
They don't, so they suffer as well because they don't
know how to respond to the spouse or the soldier
that's coming back. How do you have a conversation with
your mom or dad about the traumas that she went through.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
I don't remember. As a kid. You know, our parents,
my generation, our parents went to Vietnam, and my girlfriend
would talk her dad was a Vietnam vet. Never talked
about it, never, she never heard anything. And you know,
we were middle schoolers, and I remember her telling me,
I don't know what happened to my dad, but he
(17:29):
wakes up with these terrible nightmares and my mom has
to calm him down. And he doesn't know that she's
his wife. He thinks she's someone bad. And as a kid,
I didn't I had no idea what that meant, you know.
I was like, why would that happen? Because you're a child,
you don't know, And so you think about those families
that had I think the dynamic, you know, I imagine he
(17:54):
was proud but also probably had a lot of guilt too.
Didn't want to tell them what happened over there. Didn't
want to burden them with that, you know, and that
generation was came back to people that were horrible to them, right.
And so I think about growing up with a wall
between you and your dad or you and a parent.
(18:15):
There's that wall there that you can't break through. And
it sounds like what you're doing is breaking that wall down.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
We are and like I said, what we've tried to do.
We have so many people that really want to help,
but they just need to figure out how they help.
You know, you hear all the time, thank you for
your service, Hey, thank you for this or whatever, And
I truly appreciate that. And like I said yesterday when
several folks when we were in the speech is talking,
you know, you look at the media and the political
(18:43):
thing that we mentioned yesterday, I don't really follow any
of that. I believe that the basic base American citizen
loves the military. They love what we have, They love
the freedoms that we have, and those are not going
to go away. You know, what happened with January sixth
and on all this other stuff is just an unfortunate thing.
(19:04):
And you know, all the bryants and all the stuff
that goes with it, but that's just noise. The real
people like yourself that are getting the message out telling
people that hey, you do have hope, you do have
a reason to be here. Oh, by the way, it's Christmas,
it's Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for doing what you do.
And it does matter, you know, Yes.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I think it matters because I think that when we
don't know what the organizations are out there that are helping,
we assume that the government should help. And I think
that and that's something that I talked about over the
weekend too, is that I think that especially conservatives, have
never been so adamant that the government someone needs to
(19:44):
go in and fix this, you know, need I need
a government official to make this right. And I don't
even know that people hear themselves saying it. It's like
we've got to get a better speaker the one that's
going to fix this. You know, We've got to have
somebody in government fix this. We've never said we want
government to come and fix this before and organization who
could be better then guys, When men and women who've
(20:06):
gone through this to help other people come out of
this and understand really what's going on. And you know,
I've heard stories of people going to the VA and
they're like, I went to the VA and this guy
has never served. He didn't know how to talk to
me about what I'm going through. It was a joke.
And we've always said the private sector does things better.
I mean, I will talk to people out there who
will say, man, the private sector does school better, the
(20:27):
private sector does business better. Like the social security is
a mess because it's our a government. Why are we
asking government to fix this when we can fix this.
And we've also always been of the mindset of we
take care of our own, whether it's the church, whether
it's community. But this is an opportunity to invest in
our veterans who so desperately need someone to come around
(20:50):
them and say we are so grateful. And for all
of you out there that want to at Christmas time
say hey, this is the time where I want to
say I am so grateful to you. These are the
ways to do it. Look into these organizations that can
help folks really bring them back from a place and
save families. I mean, it's not just I think that's
(21:12):
the important thing to remember. This is not just the
man or woman who served. This is all of the
people around one person affects hundreds.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Oh absolutely, and I mean it was yesterday. Is why
I usually when I talk to folks, I asked the audience,
you know, how many people are either being in the
military or family were reserved, and so sixty percent of
the audience raise your hands. So but again it goes
back to my son left. You see gold star parents
all the time. Well, that one person that passes away
or commits suicide, it affects the entire family structure. It's
(21:45):
not just hey, my wife. You know I left my wife,
I left my children. You're affecting friends, family and everything.
So that's why we talked about the resiliency to five fs.
You know, fitness, how are you doing with your health?
You know I do that too. I take that every day.
You have to make sure that your finances are good.
So if you upset one of those fs, whether it's faith, family, friends,
(22:07):
or fitness or financial freedom, you have problems. Those are
the stressors that come up on board. And so where
sal really does a good job with really good organizations
like Task Force Dagger, you know, Warrior's Heart. You know,
most of some of these guys that do the Marine
Corps thing, all these organizations are intertwined. So my job
is to make sure we all talk right. So we
(22:30):
just did this Operate Reset week at Indian Rocks Beach
and we had a marine and he's from California, and
he was just like totally, you know, no, I can't
get anything done. No one's going to help me do anything.
So I go to the VA here at day Pines.
One of my former rangers, Dustin, is a care coalition
for the VA. Well, he runs that whole thing for Tampa,
(22:51):
but he's also connected to all fifty states. So I
gave that guy his card and he already connected him
with the right person at California to get him help.
So waving through the system of bureau I don't even
I don't even call it biocracy or or bureaucrat stuff.
It's it's a game. It's a system, and if you
(23:12):
don't know the right person in that system, you can't
get ahead in life at all. So filling out paper
X and oh you forgot to fill out paper y. Okay,
Well let's make it use your friendly for everyone. And
that's what we try to do.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So I'm an advocate. I mean, that's what we need
in so many areas. I mean, most people don't do
their own taxes. You have somebody to help you. It's
like you have to have an advocate in a lot
of different areas. Why wouldn't you need an advocate here?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
That's it. And subject matter experts within their career fields,
whether it be mental health, whether it be you know,
physical help, whether it be alcohol, drug counseling, or whatever.
I don't know enough about it, but I know who
I can call to get that help for that other person,
so they can tell those triggers. Like I said yesterday,
when you wake up in the morning and you look
in the mirror and you don't identify that you have
(23:58):
a problem, you're the problem. You have to identify that
you have issues. It's like doing your short term and
your long term goals. If you put that on a
wall and you don't follow it, you're just wasting time.
So what we try to do is we try to
reprogram thost soldiers that come back to say it's okay
to cry, it's okay to have emotion, it's okay to
(24:21):
ask for help. If you ask for help, what help
do you really need or are you just putting a
band aid on a sucking chest wound is what when
the military was saying, So you have to fix the problem.
And then once you fix the problem, how do I
continually keep that glide path going? So my mental help
and my fitness is in shape from not only myself
(24:41):
but my family. So if you identify me and you say, hey, John,
I've known you for five years and I just want
to say I'm starting to see a pattern of stuff
that has to be resonated with that person. And they
got to go, oh wow, yeah, I've known do r
She's told me that I need to do this. Well,
you probably have to put some weight behind that, because
it's not just someone telling you something. They're trying to
help you keep your help and well being back. And
(25:04):
so what Sala does is we do fishing events. We
do like I said yesterday, we just started a female
only operator Reset Week, which is.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
What it happens at the Operator Reset Week.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
What really funny is these guys are so nervous they
don't want to talk to anybody. The same thing with
the ladies that come, and then by day two they're
opening up, they're meeting people and they're like, Okay, I
didn't know that that guy had a problem. Oh I
knew that guy, I knew her. Yeah. So so every
part of a team, like I mentioned yesterday, keen construct
(25:37):
is like I never did anything by myself, always had
help on everything. In the military, you do nothing by yourself.
They say that you do your pet test, you know,
you run or whatever. No, you got somebody helping you.
Somebody's going to clock your time, nobody's going to count
your push up, somebody's gonna hold your feet for your situps.
But you're gonna have some sort of assistance with everything
you do in the military. So that's why I made
(25:58):
the comment yesterday. Nothing is done individually in the military
unless you're an individual and that's your intent and you
want your fifteen minutes of fame. No, we have men
and women that don't ask for fifteen minutes of fame.
They just go do what they're asked to do, and
they complete their mission, and then they shake hands and
they go back and do their normal life.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. You know, the point here is
that if you see someone that's constantly trying to be
out there on TV, and like we did, I did this.
I did this. This is a group effort and the
idea is to bring people together. No one's trying to
get famous off of this. This is about continuing service
(26:40):
and service looks all different at different times of life. Right,
Service may be serving overseas. Service may be bringing folks
back and taking care of them. And you have a
canine program too, right.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yes, ma'am. So Babon Canine is run by Josh Perry
and those guys identify folks. We actually gave one to
Lawrence Jones. Got a chance to meet Lawrence last year
at the at the at the hog hunt, and just
to watch Lawrence himself change when he had his dog
and how he was reacting to the folks. So again
you see personalities like yourself and you come out. They
(27:13):
just want to fit in. They want to be part
of that normal conversation. And so I had really good
conversations with Lawrence about just in general, about what we do.
And so Lawrence took it upon himself to pull some
of the hunters away. We had metal Man or Leroy
Petrie out there and pull some of our guys to
do a fireside chat and then they televised their own
fox about what the meaning of and Leroy made a
(27:36):
great point. He's like, I didn't want to come, you know,
I was very reluctant to come, but once I got here,
I didn't feel like I was worthy. And then after
I went out the first day, I'm really glad I
did come. It's a shame in that thought process. And
so that's where we get I get myself worth is.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
That paid for? Though? For them to go out there?
Like how do they how do they do it? Because
I could see how some people say this is overwhelming?
How do I even do this?
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, we have sponsors. We get people that donate to
our sal organization and special operations Wounded Warrior dot org
and they just donate to funds. We have specific groups
like somebody will donate money to operate a Reset week,
or maybe they'll donate money to our taking bacon or
just they just donate money generally to do that. So
when we had the opportunity to go to mar A Lago,
(28:25):
really crazy, you know, reach out to some folks. Some
guys at Glock Taylor, a good buddy of mine, made
some specialized pistols that had our logo on one side,
and task Force diggers on the other and all these
people are donating money. Military metal arts which have seen
probably seen on LinkedIn. They make these amazing signs out
of liquid metal and they're colored and do this. So
(28:47):
they made one for the sal logo, they made one
for Leroy Peache for the Medal of Honor, and we
optioned all those off and all that money comes back
to us. So you know, with most organizations like myself,
we don't pay anybody volunteer basis. Everybody on our board
is all volunteer. We have legal we have a lady
that does all our admin it's just all volunteered time.
(29:08):
And so those are the things that you people take
for granted for as well. They forget that, oh wow,
John's not making any money off of this. You know. Dottie,
our administrative lady, she doesn't make any money off She
just does it because she knows she needs to help folks.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
So really, I want people to think about this. The
goal here is we hear all the time that there
are twenty two veteran suicide today, and the goal here
is to make twenty two zero. That's right, and that
is what all of these people. I think that is
just so amazing all these people volunteering, putting their time
in to do this, and really that takes help. And
(29:44):
so when you're looking at your end of year giving, honestly,
look at this organization. So tell people where they can
go and look at this, because honest I believe that
the people who listen to my podcast are very like
minded and this is the type of this is the
type of opportunity we want to take and we want
to run with because just like we've talked about making
(30:08):
I mentioned over the weekend, I've been talking a lot
about you know, making that abortion number lower. Doesn't have
to be a lot, doesn't have to be government doing it.
That's something that we can do as people. Same thing here,
get together, look at the organizations that are really making progress,
and you guys are I mean, that's the beauty of this.
You can look and you can see results. You can
(30:30):
see that this is actually helping people, and how can
how can you not feel great about that? I mean, honestly,
I think that's the thing. When people are looking to
put their money someplace and say, okay, I want to
make an impact here, they want to see that there's results.
And you already have results. So tell us where exactly
they can go.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
So they can go to the Special Operations Wounded Warrior Organization,
our headquarters out of Tabor Shitting, North Carolina, which is
really adjacent to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. That's what we
do a lot of our things. But they can go
to that website and that web page and you'll see
it donate there and they can read up on the history.
We've been around for fourteen years. It was really started
by a fireside, you know, some civilians and talking to
(31:12):
some military guys and they're like, hey, we need to
really get back. And that's how it started. And then
it's just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger as the
years go on. And so just like any other organization,
you know, you want to get back more than you
ever took from something. You know, as a business owner,
I mentioned yesterday your mission statement to be a successful
business owner. If you don't follow that, you're not going
(31:33):
to be successful. So our business model is too. If
I can save one person, like we talked about yesterday,
your friend, if I can call him on the phone
and talk to him and say, hey, it does matter.
If your life matters, you matter to your family. If
I can fix that one person, then now his job
is to go pay it forward, find somebody else that
he can talk to and say, hey, I just talked
(31:55):
to this guy that I don't even know, never met
him before. He called me on the phone out of
blue and he told me that I can make a
difference by not doing certain things to end my life.
And so those are the impactful things that you do,
and your whole audience can do that they know if
somebody's struggling. I mean, I'll give you my cell phone number.
You can call me any time. You won't because I
have a passion for that. Why because I almost did
(32:17):
it and if I had not have had friends like
Sara major Rick Merrick that I'll introduce you to that
called me and let me know. It's okay John to struggle,
and it's okay to be scared. It's not okay to
mask it and hide and then try to figure out
yourself because you can't. You have to have help in
everything that you do in your life. You have to
(32:37):
have some sort of an assistance process.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I love that. It's so hard to be vulnerable, but
it's so important that people are and they let people
in and you've done great work. Johnny Walker, thank you
so much for being on today.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yes, ma'am, I appreciate it. You guys have a merry
Christmas and safe travel.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Thank you you too, and thank you all for joining
us on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. For this episod and others,
go to Tutordison podcast dot com. You can subscribe right there,
or head over to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts and join us next time
on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Have a blessed ding
Host
Buck Sexton
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